Mercy

* * *

THE LONGHORN CAFÉ was just as small-town local as Edwin had suspected it would be. The narrow building opened into a room with three tables and six stools at a counter. The place smelled of floor cleaner and old grease. The decor consisted of a few photos of cows, and the floor was noticeably out of level.

Edwin felt his stomach turn as he stepped in. Given that it was the middle of the afternoon, the café was nearly empty, but then again, so was the town. He wondered how the café could stay in business—it and that old motel he spotted at the far end of town. But he was reminded of all the cultivated fields he’d seen flying in. Must be ranches around the area for miles. Not to mention, the town was on what Pete had called the Hi-Line—the most northern two-lane highway across the top of the state.

An elderly man sat at one end of the counter, Pete at the other. The older man was slumped over a cup of coffee, head down. Edwin headed for the pilot. Pete was busy putting away a stack of pancakes and a side of bacon. Just the thought of food made Edwin sick again, but he sat down next to him and ordered a glass of milk.

“Milk?” Pete asked with a laugh. “Did you get what you needed?”

“Not really.” He’d gotten more than he’d expected, and yet he still couldn’t prove that Caligrace Westfield had lived in Westfield Manor.

“So who’s this woman you’re looking for?” the pilot asked between bites.

“Caligrace Westfield.”

He frowned. “Never heard of her.”

Not a surprise. Pete was in his early twenties, and while he knew the area, he was from a town farther east along the Hi-Line.

“Whadda you say?” At the other end of the counter, the elderly man had lifted his head from his coffee and was now looking in their direction.

Edwin gave the man his full attention. “Have you heard of a woman named Caligrace Westfield?”

“Caligrace,” the man said and closed his eyes. “Pretty as a Montana morning.”

Edwin figured the old man might be senile, but he said, “Dark hair and eyes?”

“Black as coal sometimes.” Opening his own eyes, the old man said, “But her name wasn’t Westfield.”

Edwin got up and moved down the counter. The man could be full of bull, just wanting attention. Edwin ran into those sorts all the time during an investigation. They were the ones who wanted to contribute—even if they had nothing to offer. They were often happy to make it up.

As he neared the man, he was surprised that on closer inspection, though not shaved and gray of both hair and beard, the man wasn’t as old as he’d first thought.

“Where do you know her from?” Edwin asked.

“That home outside of town.”

“Westfield Manor?”

“Weren’t no manor,” the man said with obvious disgust.

Knowing it couldn’t be possible, he still reached into his pocket and pulled out the photograph Rourke had supplied him with. “The woman I’m looking for, though, isn’t very old. If the home closed twenty-five years ago, Caligrace wouldn’t have been more than—” He was going to say “five.”

“Sixteen,” the man interrupted.

Sixteen? Edwin did the math. No way was the woman in the photo forty-one. He tried to hide his disappointment.

“That her photo?” the man asked and took the enhanced snapshot with his thick fingers.

“It’s not a great photo. But you think you know the woman?” Edwin asked even though he already knew the answer. This man couldn’t have known her. The dates were all off.

“That’s not my Caligrace.”

“No.” Edwin started to take the photo back when he realized the man was crying. He glanced toward the waitress, wondering if he’d been right the first time to suspect this man was unbalanced. But the waitress was flirting with Pete and not paying any attention to this end of the counter.

“She looks just like her mama, though,” the man said, wiping his eyes before he handed back the photo. “It’s good to see that she made it all right.”

Edwin frowned at him. “Her mama?”

“That’s the Caligrace I knew. But she’s buried out at Pauper’s Acre,” he said with a nod of his head in the direction of Westfield Manor.

“You’re telling me that this woman’s mother was one of the girls who lived at Westfield Manor?”

“She’s the spittin’ image of her mother, so I’d say, yeah, I am. The home took the bad girls, but they also took unwed mothers when no one wanted them. Caligrace was pregnant. Had a baby girl.”

Edwin frowned, trying to make sense of this. “So Caligrace and her mother shared the same first name, and this woman in the photo is the baby girl she had after she came to live at the home?”

The man nodded.

“How is it that you know this?” Edwin asked, still not sure he could trust this man—or his information.

The man blew his nose into his paper napkin, took a drink of his coffee, then said, “I saw her the night the bus dumped her off. She was crying. I could see that she was pregnant. She had nothing but the clothes on her back. It was winter. I gave her an old coat I had in the back of my rig. I would have given her more, but...”

“But?” Edwin prodded.

The man looked away. “I was thirty-one, married with a pregnant wife at home and two little kids of my own.” He shrugged, his hand trembling as he lifted his coffee cup again. “I couldn’t help her. That’s just the way it was.”

So the man was fifty-six. He looked a whole lot older. Chalk it up to a hard life, apparently. A married man with a pregnant wife at home and two kids when he met the pregnant sixteen-year-old Caligrace.

“How was it that you were there that night? Did you work there?” Edwin asked hopefully as he tucked the photo back into his jacket pocket.

“I was a sheriff’s deputy returning one of the runaways that night.”

CHAPTER SEVEN (#ulink_67d16986-0dd1-5e77-b68f-a8dc2508e47a)

“WHAT ABOUT THE CHILD Caligrace gave birth to?” Edwin asked after he and former sheriff’s deputy Burt Denton introduced themselves. “What happened to her?”

Burt shrugged. “Never heard.”

By Edwin’s calculations, the Caligrace in the photo would have been about five at the time of the raid. So maybe her birth certificate was right and she was thirty. Apparently, she’d been put on the state bus that had taken the girls away. Unless someone in town had taken her.

“Any chance some couple felt sorry for the little girl and took her as their own?” he asked.

“I would have taken her in a minute, but like I said, I had enough mouths at home to feed, not that my wife would have stood for it.” He shook his head. “No one around here took her in, but someone must have somewhere else since, according to you, she’s still alive.” The man’s eyes narrowed. “You didn’t say why you were looking for her.”

“She might be a witness in a homicide,” he said carefully.

The former deputy merely nodded as if he recognized bull when he heard it. “I hope she has a better life than her mother did,” he said, getting to his feet. He glanced at Edwin. “Is that too much to hope for?”